Finding Corvara, Alto Adige, 2006

View from the road

One of the many great things about Angel is his interesting hobbies...ham radio and cycling...which have always taken us to great places. Ham radio took me to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, paradise. And cycling has taken me to the Alta Badia, where Corvara is, in the region of the Alto Adige.

Verona, in July of 2006, was a cauldron of heat and humidity. The A/C wasn't working because, as our landlord so quaintly put it, 'a little Italian spider must have crawled inside the pipes and built a nest'. How cute. Actually, the landlord hadn't maintained the system in fifteen years, and the outflow pipes were caked and clogged. But that is another story.

So, when Angel signed up for the Maratona dles Dolomiti, and asked me if I would like to go for three days into the high mountains, I thought it over for a nanosecond, and packed. We rented a car and drove north. As we neared Bolzano, my jaw didn't bother to close anymore...I couldn't believe the beauty of the mountains. Growing up in Northern California, I thought I knew beautiful mountains, but the Dolomiti are unique in all the world for their composition and color.

We made a stop at this beautiful crystal lake, Lago di Carezza (Karersee). In November 2006, we drove Sandra to the Dolomiti, and of course the Lake was frozen and buried in snow.

Driving down into the valley in which lies the beautiful resort town of Corvara, I was convinced we had accidentally gone to Austria. And we had, in a way. The Alto Adige was part of Austria, and was given to Italy after WWI. Then Mussolini did bad things...tried to eradicate the Ladino native culture, actually having German names chiseled off of grave markers, changing everything to Italian. A commission after WWII decreed that the heritage of the Ladino people of the mountains be restored, and now the people of this region speak German, Ladino and Italian. Ths street signs are in at least German and Italian. The architecture is chalet style, with a great use of wood. The towns are sparkling clean, and in the Summer, flowers are everywhere.

View from our room at the Posta Zirm.

Above all, the mountains. And at night, the crisp cold air, with the cowbells in the distance. We stayed at the Hotel Posta Zirm, which will celebrate 100 years in 2008. Our room was in the new addition, four stories tall, with a large balcony. At night, we threw open the doors and windows, and slept under down comforters. Heaven! I forgot for a few days about the little spider in the pipes.

Corvara, and the surrounding towns in the valleys of the Alta Badia, are so different from Verona. The most important things here are sports, good health, hearty eating, simple dressing.

Lest I forget why we were there, this is a photo of Angel carbo-loading at 4:30 AM on Sunday so that he could cycle out in the dark to join 9,000 other cyclists in the town of La Villa at the starting line for the Maratona (http://www.maratona.it/).